A 22-Year-Old VC on Self-Directed Learning, AI Ethics, and Why Algorithms Flatten Culture

Vance Crowe [00:00:01] As Crow flies on the Vance Crowe podcast, Nicole Williams, welcome to the podcast.

Nicole Williams [00:00:09] Hello.

Vance Crowe [00:00:11] So we are Friday morning super early because I wanted to find a way for us to have a conversation and this is a difficult conversation to start not because you are difficult to talk with, but it's hard to put you in context for the farmer scientist audience that I'm interviewing. So just to start off, where are you living and what do you do for a living, Nicole?

Nicole Williams [00:00:33] Yeah, currently I'm living in Northern Virginia but soon to be in DC and I just made almost this sort of career shift to venture capital investing in sort of frontier technologies at a seed stage firm called Compound. But before that I was studying data science at Lambda School and before that I was working at this startup that sort of created these experimental educational programs. And before that I was at Liberty University. So I have been sort of all over the place as my Twitter is representative of I would say.

Vance Crowe [00:01:07] So you seem very young to have this, this much of a career. How long were you at each of these different things that you're talking about?

Nicole Williams [00:01:14] Yeah, yeah, I definitely did. A lot of these things were overlapping. I was at college for, well at LA at Liberty for exactly one semester and then immediately after that I started working at a software company subsidiary of Gartner researching software in the world that is weird niche softwares. And then during that I was sort of creating an education for myself, sort of asking what do I want to learn about the world and how can I still be learning it without paying $20,000 a year for university. And then after that I worked at a startup for about a year and went through medical technology accelerator working on something, some technology that I was thinking about and then LAMB to school, which is nine, well six months for me and then now BC and I'm 22. So four years that all fit in there.

Vance Crowe [00:02:03] And so like this is an unusual thing for somebody to be at a venture capital fund and in helping advise on investments you, you kind of described that you're a self learner. What, what is the draw to this and this kind of wild career?

Nicole Williams [00:02:18] Yeah, I think for me, oh my god, I think about education a lot. Education is something that's super important to me and I'm definitely not anti academia, anti university. I think there's like, I love the idea of these places but I think often they're not a good fit. People are sort of forced into like a few very large boxes for their education. They don't realize that there are other potentials. And so for me a lot of what I was interested, whether it's data science or sort of like weird philosophical reason readings, it was hard to find that in one educational package. And so I just sort of started just basically quizzing all my friends that went to universities. I like saying gimme your syllabi, gimme your readings, gimme your data science like knowledge or textbooks and put together a big syllabi that I started sort of self working through.

Vance Crowe [00:03:09] I think a lot of people during Coronavirus when they went into the lockdowns had these grand aspirations to teach themselves new things and to to get very regimented. You are talking about doing this not just for coronavirus but as a way of living. And a lot of people are like, yeah you could get a college education with a library card, but most people don't have the discipline to do it. So how have you been able to manage to not just be aspirational, I want to learn these things but actually take the time to read it and and learn.

Nicole Williams [00:03:40] Yeah, it's definitely hard. Like I won't say that doing like MOOCs, which is a big thing, whether it's Coursera, edX, you can technically get that like Stanford class taught to you online by a lot of professors now. But online education is extraordinarily hard as I think we're all learning in quarantine. Honestly. I think surrounding yourself with opportunities to talk about the thing that you're learning, to like reiterate that information and also just be excited about like re-remember the original reason you decided to like pace through this super long textbook by yourself is super essential. So I like to go to a lot of like random le lectures on the topic and just sort of like start talking to people, see if the education really sunk into my brain

Vance Crowe [00:04:23] And have, have you learned enough to be able to apply it? I mean you were working at a software startup and like did you know enough from your self-teaching to just jump in

Nicole Williams [00:04:32] Jump? Yeah, I think so when I was working at the startup it was, it was a lot more amorphous. I wasn't technically a software engineer at the time, but I was basically getting to talk with a lot of like cool science agencies. So we worked with like NASA and NIH and RBE and so it was a lot less applied at the time, which gave me more space to do applied studying basically on my own after work I would ask the two co-founders, I would say, Hey, there's this like white paper, I want to understand like what math do I need to be able to understand this? And we would sort of work backwards once I already had that like applied piece of knowledge I wanna understand and often that a piece of knowledge I was working towards would come from meetings or whatever. Somebody would mention something, I'd be like, wait, that sounds really interesting. That connects these areas of other things that I'm interested in. And so I think applied then less so lambda school is really helpful for that. Just building like a very, like a list of products and a short amount of time you're sort of forced to get good at that applied education but also just forcing yourself to apply the knowledge day to day. It's like learning a language. You have to just talk about the things you're learning.

Vance Crowe [00:05:35] Yeah, that's right. You can't learn a, I mean like I studied Spanish in high school for a couple of years and then took college level Spanish. But it wasn't until I went to work for a paving company where I was surrounded every single day by people speaking Spanish that I was like, oh, that's how the language works. Like oh that's why you need nouns and verbs and conjugation.

Nicole Williams [00:05:55] Yeah, I think that's a benefit too honestly to to self-education because a lot of times it's really challenging even if you are the most experienced educator to keep your curriculum aligned with the real world. I would al almost say even it's impossible. And that's why like the case for liberal arts education is so strong. You're setting like a foundation, not like an exact experimental like place for a person to learn the thing that they're gonna do in the real world. And so if you maybe don't have the money or the time to go through like a four year degree in many ways like putting yourself in that real world environment in any way that you can. Even if it means, like for me it meant taking jobs that were not super ideal. Sometimes being able to sort of put yourself in that environment where you're getting the application, you're, you're seeing all the stuff that like no university professor can realistically keep up with was really high probe for the whole self-learning situation.

Vance Crowe [00:06:49] I think that somebody that goes on the self-learning path that you've gone on, like you are really betting on your own sales ability because most everybody else has this little warm piece of paper that keeps 'em warm and then when they want to apply for a job then they just put that piece of paper forward and I can belittle it. But I have that right, like if I, if I get into a situation where I had to go apply for a job, I'd be able to say, well look, I have this, these degrees they prove my, my intelligence, my ability to work, my ability to get things done. Does that frighten you at all living in this world?

Nicole Williams [00:07:23] Yeah, I think it's, it definitely is. I don't know if I would say frightening. I think it would say it's very motivating. Like I'm motivated by the idea of of a challenge. And so knowing that the decisions I make about my education have to provide like at the end of the day they have to provide value in some way. Not in terms of like a just very strong productivity framework for everything I'm learning, but like I'm really forced to evaluate everything I would be learning in a way that I don't think I would have been forced to think about in university. And so it's sort of invigorating, honestly. It's also invigorating to be able to talk to people about this and be like, I chose to learn all of these things. I chose to learn all these things 'cause they fit into this narrative of how I'm interested in the universe and that's not something a lot of people can say. And so I think even that talking point alone is compelling when I talk to other people that like you decided to read that textbook yourself, like your professor didn't make you do that and it was still interesting and I'm like, yeah, honestly it was, it was pretty interesting. So

Vance Crowe [00:08:21] Yeah, I mean that definitely sets you apart and I think it's represented in your Twitter feed, right? Like because you don't have a standard curriculum, right? You're not being like, well as most sophomores that have gone through college have this much education and they quote these types of things or they think these things, your Twitter feed is the feed that I try and point people towards when I'm like, you need to get out of your network and find something different. And I don't mean it in terms of like, go find somebody you can argue with. I'm saying go find somebody that thinks about things that you don't even think are real or have no concept that this is something important in the world and your feed is a constant stream of that.

Nicole Williams [00:09:02] Aw, yeah. I feel like that's part of why I like Twitter is like a good portion of my tweets I would say are just me saying, Hey, what about this weird niche of the universe? Like does anybody who studied this exists? And then suddenly 10 people come out of the woodwork and they're like, oh yeah, when I was, you know, studying in Columbia, you know, I met this person who told me all about this book and this area of studying. I'm like, great. Like once you sort of invest in that like knowledge of like fringe parts of the world, it sort of compounds and then people who are also interested in that come towards you. And it's just this great like large rolling snowball of weird knowledge.

Vance Crowe [00:09:39] How do you think about who you follow, who you let into your attention stream on Twitter?

Nicole Williams [00:09:44] Ooh, I would say people who it's, it's very hard to explain but when you look at somebody's feed, I think you can really tell whether they're trying to, like whether they're trying to fit a certain image. Like there's stereotypes of like all the corners of Twitter and the people they tweet, the people they retweet, the people they like. But if you go to somebody's feed and it's just like a hodgepodge of interesting weird thoughts and they're not really concerned about like optimizing for retweet ability or optimize for optimizing, for looking cool, that's like a really high signal to me. I would rather people who are just genuinely curious about the world that have like much less experience or much less like whatever else it may be. That's the most interesting person on Twitter to me.

Vance Crowe [00:10:31] Yeah, I interviewed Yoshi Bach a few months, maybe a couple months ago and he uses this term all the time Normie, which like I am quintessential normie like everything about me was, you know, go on to college, go do these normie things. But when I think about like the idea that you're describing there on hey I'm gonna post something out into the world, is this something that anyone could post just because it occurred to them or they've seen this, they, it's basically, I think a lot of people on Twitter are an echo. They heard some, he say something, they may be changed it slightly and pushed it out into the world. And like when I think about that, I definitely don't want to be that and then you kind of go through this whole thing, well am I scheming then to try and be something I'm not. But I think there's something too trying to find out like I only wanna add into this conversation something that is enlightening in some way, but I, it's hard to describe how to create that value.

Nicole Williams [00:11:30] Yeah, okay. It's also really crazy that you mention him because I followed him on Twitter for a while 'cause he's sort of like in the AI space but didn't really know who he was. And I went to this conference in Prague and he was one of the speakers and his speaker was great, his speech was great. But I feel like that is such a testament to the way Twitter connects you to these people. You'd be interested in real life preemptively and often you don't even realize it. Sometimes somebody will follow me for a while and I'll be like, I know they exist and they'll DM me and they'll be like, Hey, I see you're coming to New York or San Francisco, do you wanna get coffee? And I meet them in real life and it's like somebody that the universe has selected for me as a friend. Like I wouldn't have even been able to do this for myself and it works out phenomenally. But yeah, back to Normies, there's definitely a lot of normies on Twitter. I would say posting things that someone else said that you think are great isn't necessarily bad. Like there's definitely a space to that. I post so many quotes, I post so many that type of thing as well. But I think people, I just like people who feel comfortable with voicing whatever weird thoughts or patterns they might notice at the edge of fields of study.

Vance Crowe [00:12:38] And how do you take criticism on Twitter? Is it something you're open to? Like I I feel like yeah, it's gotta be a weird experience for somebody that puts things out there that are so far away from Normie world.

Nicole Williams [00:12:51] Yeah, it's, it's definitely odd. It depends what it's about. It's definitely also like gone up recently because sort of the network of people that I actually talk to more often that know like the way I tweet or when I'm joking or what things I'm genuine about has decreased relative to my follower size. And so there's a lot of people who are just sort of like, why are you tweeting this thing? And I'm like, it's ironic, but I can't explain that to every person who re responds to me. So I don't know, people for the most part aren't that bad, but most of the time I'll sort of like take it to the dms if it's something I really feel like I need to respond to because it's, it can be hard. Everything feels like, it's like a, like a public decree when you're responding to somebody on Twitter sometimes. And so you just gotta talk to them personally, which I think is the same thing in real life.

Vance Crowe [00:13:36] Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. And like sometimes you just put something out there to test an idea and I'm not even trying to defend that idea. I'm putting it out there because I'm like, hey, I genuinely wanna know if somebody has a different way of thinking about this, but suddenly it becomes like you have to defend this idea to the death and like

Nicole Williams [00:13:55] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:13:55] I wasn't really prepared for that when I threw it out on Twitter.

Nicole Williams [00:13:58] Yeah, and I think that's dangerous too, right? Because like that starts, that is the trail down to radicalism where everybody's like, okay, you put this thing out there, you need to defend it, you need to like stand up for this idea that you put into the universe. And sometimes it's like, no, you told me that like this thing about it, you know, maybe was like less compelling than I thought and we came to a good agreement there and like that's the, that's the point of Twitter. And so yeah, I think people can be too like, okay now I feel the need to defend myself. This is serious and I have to defend my Twitter honor and it's just not that serious.

Vance Crowe [00:14:31] You've used the word radicalization twice now, which is an interesting word, right? Particularly if you're saying, I came from this kind of evangelical background and I am think about radicalization on Twitter. What does that word mean to you?

Nicole Williams [00:14:46] Oh man, this is hard to, I think especially within the lens of religion, I have a lot of like empathy for people on any of the ends of the radicalization spectrum here. But I do think, you know, coronavirus has made the people who, who are a little bit radicalized more apparent where I would say it just means if you aren't looking at everyone's semi critically, you're open to something, hearing something not positive about a person that you really trust, whether that's Jerry Falwell, the, the, the head of the university I went to who said that Coronavirus was created by North Korea as a bio weapon. There's some people who are like, all right, he said that. So that's, that's the truth for me. It's less about what you believe and more about are you willing to just hear other people's opinions. Somebody who's radical is not willing to hear other people's opinions.

Vance Crowe [00:15:41] That's a great point. And actually that's one of those things where you can apply that lens to yourself. I, you know, I'm thinking about this. So yesterday I got done with a run and I tweeted a conversation that you and I had had before about like how I'm really worried about masks. And so I was saying, hey, I think there's a big downside to this. It lowers the amount of communication you can have. Like you can't tell somebody's intent. And I put this out there and people, some people loved it, right? They were tweeting about it and putting it out there like, hey, this is the truth, you know, in all caps. And then there were other people being like, how dare you? And, and then other people writing me on dms being like, Hey, this is another way to think of it. And by this morning I think I've changed part of my opinion on this, but like I, I feel like the most uncomfortable part about putting that tweet out there was that people were taking it and writing like 100% truth, 100%, right? Because at the first it's like, yeah, look at that, look I found some truth. And then you're like, wait a second, I may be doing something bad here. Like I may be riling people up, I may be creating divisiveness. Like this may have been a bad idea,

Nicole Williams [00:16:52] Right? Yeah. It's the, it's the same deal with Elon Musk, right? I've been talking to somebody who about this where it's like you can think Elon Musk is tweeting incredibly stupid stuff. He's like, has some stupid opinions, but you can also recognize that he is like made jumps for a few different industries, like significant jumps. And you can hold both of those two at the same time and recognize them as true. And so many people just have an incredibly hard time with that. And I think often those people overlap with Twitter and Twitter is just like a place to get out your anger, but if everybody can just listen to other people's opinions a little bit more would be a better place.

Vance Crowe [00:17:30] So you know, you're working on machine learning and artificial intelligence and these are big words that encompass a huge volumes of people's perspective about what they mean. But when you think about the world of perspective and nuance and social media feeds along with AI and machine learning, what, what comes to mind for you?

Nicole Williams [00:17:49] Oh man, I feel like I tweet about this so often we are going into an age of like unprecedented change in terms of the way algorithms dictate things. I think my pin tweet right now is like this idea of algorithmic populism, which is that things that are defined that are things where your experience is heavily curated by an algorithm and it's a large volume of people where their experience is being curated by an algorithm. So for example, Amazon search that is radically flattening people's taste. So if you look at for example, maybe you, maybe you search t-shirt on Amazon, the thing you're gonna get served up to you is no longer the experience you might have had on just Google or even like an older web search where you would get this like these boutiques and this variety of like things that relied on a billion to other people's taste in a, in a much more nuanced way. Amazon is like sort of flattening your taste to the point where you're gonna get the thing that most people in the world probably are interested in. And so you're sort of like edging out the algorithms often edge out all of these interesting sideline pieces of taste, if that makes sense.

Vance Crowe [00:19:03] Oh that is fascinating, right? Like the convenience and efficiency and kind of the Renee Girard just give me what other people think of as a t-shirt, I want that then making the the diversity index go way, way, way down,

Nicole Williams [00:19:18] Right? Yeah. And it's, it's sad too because I mean people talk about this a lot in terms of business competitiveness, which is one way to look at it. But it just in terms of art and anything reliant upon taste, we talk about this in liminal spaces a lot I think with like airport design, cafe design, big city design. How come you can go to any city now and find that sort of like minimalist designed architectural space that you can hang out in that isn't really like beautiful but you don't hate it. And that experience can be replicated from any large city that often I would say is due to the same thing where it's like this, this space and the way we design this space is being architected by such a large amount of people's taste that it's not super appealing to anybody but it's not offensive to anybody either.

Vance Crowe [00:20:07] Wow. And I mean I think that that is why when people go to suburbs, right, they have this like, ah, it all feels like plastic things don't feel authentic, we don't feel real. And it's because everything seems like it's cookie cutter the same.

Nicole Williams [00:20:22] Definitely. Definitely.

Vance Crowe [00:20:24] Yeah. So for you, you are constantly slamming together new ideas. So for example, fashion is one of those things that's completely lost on me if, if you're watching the video I'm wearing gray socks, gray shoes, gray sweatshirt, gray t-shirt underneath my gray sweater because it's not something that ever has struck me. But I see the stuff that you put out there and one of the things that it makes me think of is like the future. So the other day you put out some stuff about these women wearing and women wearing these crazy costumes and you were like, if I were running the universe or the galaxy, this is the costume I was wearing, I would wear and I was thinking like an Isaac Asimov kind of futuristic and I think, wow, that is so important. How in the world did you collide in with fashion and have it be something that you, you want to interact with and play with?

Nicole Williams [00:21:18] Yeah, I don't know. I think it's super interesting in terms of the amount you're able to communicate before you talk to somebody even about yourself with what you're wearing. And like even that tweet of what I would wear if I rule the galaxy, it's not something I'll wear on the everyday basis, but I think that the exercise of thinking about like what is the most compelling outfit for me as ruler of the Galaxy or whatever it may be, is sort of a fun thing to think about. Whether that's like you and your gray outfit, which fashion interested people would call a grout fit. Very popular right now. Like you may have been unknowingly compelled by this trend, who knows? It's just something very interesting even to go back to that like and the iconic line from Devil Wears Prada, everything you're wearing in fashion, even people who auto often think that they're like removed from fashion are like in this sort of like referential universe where it was informed by history and this designer who was, you know, thinking about this major movement in artistic expression and all of these things all come down to ultimately often decide what you see in this like random retail store you may have just chosen because it's near your house or something like that.

Vance Crowe [00:22:29] Yeah. All the the thou, I mean it's kind of like eye pencil. Are you familiar with this like poem of, of like how things come together when you think about fashion? You can't even wrap your mind around it really. Like you start seeing like how textiles work and how how every single culture has some form of textile, which means that that if you look around the world, the the variability is off the charts.

Nicole Williams [00:22:52] Yeah, I, textile sciences and material science are also super interesting to me. I was in Istanbul this past summer and it was really cool to go, a lot of their art museums have so many more textile centered pieces because textiles are off obviously like a huge part of Turkish history. Yeah, I think that area of it, that's also like another area that combines my two favorite things, which are sort of science and art where you're really getting down to like both the utility and the utility of the material itself. Like is it stretching the way you need it to? Is it helping you like move better? But also this very like beautiful traditional oriented, family-oriented practice that's been handed down over centuries. Just a very exciting field in general to me.

Vance Crowe [00:23:35] Yeah, the St. Louis Art Museum is like a national treasure. It is, it is an amazing art museum right in the center of the country and downstairs they have this textile area and if I had not met my mentor Pete, I would've just been like, who cares? It's a rug, right? But he would always take a tablecloth, like if, if we pulled something out and he would hold it up and he would like fold it over to see like how close the thread were put together or how did the machine go together to knit it And, and it's like all of these things that surround you, but it's just like water. If, if you've always been swimming in it, you don't realize how much thought and ingenuity and industry went into it.

Nicole Williams [00:24:12] Definitely. I think that's, that's also at the root of so many things I'm interested in, which is like everything, everything around you was designed by somebody and often somebody who studies these systems of objects and like the way your shelf is made was formed by a variety of factors you can't even begin to like probably think about. And that whole world of certain like hidden language, hidden systems, hidden influences is very interesting to me. I think aesthetics often overlaps with that because people are like, oh they made it that way 'cause it was pretty, people will buy it 'cause it looks nice. And even then it's like why do people think that looks nice now? Why would people not think that looked nice a hundred years ago? I dunno. I wanna find out.

Vance Crowe [00:24:54] Yeah. And and fashion is one of those things that there, it, it changes so much that what is considered classically beautiful or classically oriented. I mean maybe that last 50 years, right? If you go back to what would've been classic a hundred years ago, it would be so far afield from our aesthetic that we would be appalled by it.

Nicole Williams [00:25:14] Yeah, yeah it's true. And it's, I think high fashion right now is also sort of like pushing back against a lot of this stuff. It's interesting like a lot of, there's a lot of movements that are almost like anti luxury luxury and I'm not exactly sure why this is happening, but there's so many brands where it's like, it might be the t-shirt that just says like a single line of text across it and you wouldn't know that it's something that was like 500 or a thousand dollars unless you're sort of like in the know, which is also, I don't know, I find that movement fascinating

Vance Crowe [00:25:46] And and like we were talking about this before, you think this is because there was such a strong pushback from celebrities and stuff that we're like, we're all going through coronavirus together, however I'm in my mansion.

Nicole Williams [00:25:58] Yeah, I think some of the, some of the sort of like pajama and lounge wear stuff especially, there's been a lot of articles about this like sudden rise and prominence of these tie dye sweatsuits that a lot of, a lot of like either fashion icons or sort of very wealthy people are wearing. Well again, yeah, it's this very internal signal of like, you and I both know that this is something nice but it's not this super just respon responded display of my own wealth. That's sort of like confronting you very aggressively in the way that has sort of rubbed a people, rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in the face of coronavirus I think.

Vance Crowe [00:26:34] So during this coronavirus, what has changed about the way you've been consuming information or spending your time for somebody that's so self-directed and was already doing online distance learning? How much has your life changed?

Nicole Williams [00:26:48] Honestly, because I have been remote working in some sense for the last two years, I would say a lot less than the average person, although in general I've sort of been made aware of how much I, how much I value just having a structure and sort of like just general, just general sort of rituals around everything that I'm doing every day because it really sets apart each part of the day. And so that's been really nice. I've also been walking a lot, real walking and reading at the same time, which you can get really good at really fast. That's been quite enjoyable.

Vance Crowe [00:27:24] So do you do that with a book or with your phone or how do you walk and read, explain how you learn to do that.

Nicole Williams [00:27:30] You definitely need a book. I would say a book. You just gotta make sure you're walking on relatively flat ground. Phone is too hard in your phone. It's gotta be the book.

Vance Crowe [00:27:41] And you've been doing this like, would you say you've walked and read a mile?

Nicole Williams [00:27:45] Yeah, I, I accidentally walked 10 miles the other day. I, I showed up near my friend's house and I was like, I did not realize that this much, you know, 10 miles would get me this far in Virginia. But it was exciting. I got distracted by my book.

Vance Crowe [00:27:59] What did you read for 10 miles? That's a totally different way to mark time.

Nicole Williams [00:28:04] Yeah. Yeah. I was reading the history of western science, which is something that I've been very interested in recently, which is like how do we think about the bubbles of sort of like rationality and science and also religion now? Like do those things overlap? Should they overlap? Why or why shouldn't they? And that question throughout history, which it turns out a lot of people have been asking for a long time, which is why it's helpful to read this sort of thing. Yeah. So I've been enjoying that a lot.

Vance Crowe [00:28:32] What have been some of the discoveries out that book? I, I mean 'cause I think like right now in this exact moment, what a book to be reading because there is very, very few people have any answers at all. So you end up having faith in one story or another. The coronavirus is terrible, masks are what we need or coronavirus is nothing. We don't need masks, but people are putting their faith in a story.

Nicole Williams [00:28:54] Mm, yeah, that's true. There's been a lot of, just in the 13th century there, which is, you know, where I was reading on the 10 miles in that point in history, there's just a lot of discussion between the church and Aristotle and his teachings of like how things in the universe come into play. Just people going back and forth and the church was like, you know, we can, we should take science with open arms. Science off often proves our claims of faith proves like Christianity largely. And some people would say, okay, you're practic you're not practicing philosophy correctly and you're not practicing your faith correctly. If those two don't align was like another big interesting movement. And some big theologians at the time agreed and some disagreed. But yeah, it's just a time, it's a timeless question and it's cool to hear people thinking about the same thing in only a slightly different way. S years ago

Vance Crowe [00:29:47] I went to a Jesuit university, Marquette and I way undervalued the, the logic like the, the liberal arts part of it until much later. But I do remember in our philosophy classes taught by a priest that if philosophy and theology come into conflict, so long as the philosophy follows the fundamentals of logic, then you have to question your theology because the philosophy is used as the mathematics to understand the logical arguments of the Bible and that if they come into conflict under Jesuit cheating, it's not to say you just throw out the faith, but it's to say you've probably hit on something that is an incongruity with the way you understand God as opposed to the laws of logic and philosophy are broken.

Nicole Williams [00:30:33] Yeah, yeah, I am, I am so interested in that question. I think it's super hard even just in terms of like, if you look at the wideness of the way Christianity has been practiced throughout history, even currently I have, you know, a very limited exposure to majority sort of like east coast Protestant culture. And luckily I went to a school where I got to talk to a lot of Orthodox people, honestly, a lot of atheist people at, for surprisingly at a, at a Christian school. But there's just such a Christianity in, in, you know, Africa and the way that like sort of a spirituality is, is more highly valued there and aesthetics are more highly valued in orthodoxy. I think a lot of times we, it's also easy to like put your own beliefs into logic, surprisingly, right? Logic should be immune from that. But I think I've recently realized how much my own like religious education was centered about how can we prove these things out? How can we can study apologetics and all these other things to perfectly argue our points in a way that nobody else can, can argue with them. And in reality it's sort of, it's just a very difficult and difficult balance.

Vance Crowe [00:31:45] You said orthodoxy has an aesthetic, I've never thought of it that way, right? Like when I think of orthodoxy, I think like, oh those are the people that wear the all black robes or the all white robes. But as I'm thinking about more of the Orthodox, you're right, the ornateness with which they can do things maybe is because they're so singularly focused on one domain and aren't trying to please all people.

Nicole Williams [00:32:07] Yeah, and just, I, I really admire, you know, Eastern Orthodox and the in general it's prominent orthodoxy, the idea that you, we should be worshiping with our entire body basically. And so all of your senses, it should be an experience that occupies all of your senses, whether that's your smell and like just all sorts of things you're smelling, you're hearing in different ways that aren't just singing worship music. And for me that's, I think that's super compelling. I think that should be more prominent. Part of

Vance Crowe [00:32:40] You were mentioning Africa and, and or like this is what I was thinking of as you were talking about some of the spirituality. So I lived in Kenya for a while and it wasn't until I came back from there and I started studying culture from, you know, a more objective standpoint and they talked about a, a concept called monoclonic and polychronic time, which is depending on what type of culture you're in, how do you view the, the way that you spend time. So in a capitalistic, industrialized culture, we have monoclonic time, like everybody shows up at 8:00 AM to do what they're supposed to do. And then when you're done at five you go home. If you're talking with somebody like you and I are talking and I meet and our meeting time is up at five 30, you understand if I'm like, hey, I gotta go talk to this other person. However, in poly chronic time, which you know, you sometimes think of as like island time, you have this concept where people are much more relationship focused and they're all about the experience going on right now. So if you then came to me and said, Hey Vance, it's five 30, I gotta go. I would be like, what? You don't value this relationship at all. So

Nicole Williams [00:33:45] Taking

Vance Crowe [00:33:45] An industrialized mindset and dropping it into polychronic time, it makes you almost explode because you can't handle the fact that it seems like everyone is rejecting you.

Nicole Williams [00:33:55] Yeah, I've never, I've never heard the explicit words before, but that makes so much sense of like some of my friends who've been like either visiting family in the Middle East or living there for a while said, it's just, you know, the way if you, if you are interested in spending time with somebody else, they are going to like, you know, a go all out for that sort of like interpersonal, that relationship is very valuable, but also like whatever time limits you set often are thrown out the window. It's like just we are having a great time together and that could go until like 3:00 AM in the night because we're enjoying each other's presence. The time here is not the most important thing, which also yeah, I love that. Honestly, more people in the US shouldn't be like that.

Vance Crowe [00:34:33] Well for me it was like unnerving, right? Because here I am trying to be the good Peace Corps volunteer that's sitting and happy with like what the culture is going on. But at the, at the exact same time I have this Swiss watch going off in my head about the things that I'm missing and like how things aren't working. And I think about this in the context of church and for me, I was not in the moment because they were, I, you know, before we went to church I'd be like, well how long does this last? And they'd be like, two hours. And I'd be like, all right, start the clock, right? Instead of being like, I'm in this experience and I can have it all envelop around me and and really give, it gave me a sense of eventually you have to just give into it because if you fight it all the time, all you are is angry. And now in the, in the current world, so I'm not religious but I grew up Catholic and I decided this year like, hey, I wanna know what is it that I just rejected and thought out of hand. Hey that's silly. Those stories, the whole catal Catholic tradition. So I'm gonna go to church and I'm gonna try and observe it in the same way that I did when I was in Africa where I am curious about all the things I don't understand instead of just going through the motions. And I find it to be a good exercise to try, but extremely difficult to be present in a service that I've seen a thousand times, which is the Catholic mass.

Nicole Williams [00:35:59] Hmm, I I totally understand that. It's like I've had the very similar challenge where going through Christian education from the time I was in kindergarten where like your Bible class is something that happens every day and chapel happens every week. Where as like an, you know, a 6-year-old you're singing hymns and I mean you have very little awareness to begin with, which there's some arguments for that, there's some arguments against that. Like whether sort of this, like Aristotle talks about habituation, right? Does habituation transform you into something better? Does this over time, even if you're not interested in it, become like better for you and more compelling or is that not the case? But it was interesting to see over time as I grew up, a lot of my friends who went to public school or just had like a less sort of like rigorous religious structure sort of put upon them before it was something they consciously decided there was a lot more. I think just, just genuine curiosity is a lot easier to have when you haven't heard all of these stories a billion times and it's hard to sort of like process them with new eyes and some of the craziness that is the bible honestly with, with new eyes. So I totally feel that.

Vance Crowe [00:37:08] So coming from Liberty University and, and the background that you have when you've left it and gone to this very unusual world of VC capital and trying to do ai, how did those two worlds square now, now that you're, you know, a 22-year-old independent person away from the family?

Nicole Williams [00:37:26] Honestly it's, it's not, I I thought that I, you know, again, having this education where it's apologetics and how are you gonna argue your faith to the world and everybody's gonna be trying to like thrusting their secular beliefs on your life. Like it's not the case. I wrote my thesis at the end of high school on the realm of faith in science and how do these overlap and I defended it in front of our headmaster and it's to see this big serious thing. And on one hand it was great, it prepared me a lot because I read great thinkers in this space and sort of like knew what the historical precedent was. But on the other hand, like everybody is interested in these questions. Like some people have radically different beliefs than me about like Silicon Valley and the sort of state of ethics there, but rarely have I met somebody who's just like total like utilitarian like algorithms are helping our lives and so we should just not think about it or you know, there's no very serious issues like brought up by this technology. And so honestly it's been, it's been very exciting to get into all these very serious spaces where people are truly like honestly deciding the future and see that people are really, really seriously thinking about the implications and whether or not this could be used for more evil than good. It is hard because often especially and we're sort of in this AI race against China and a number of other places, I think we have like a very challenging, we're in a challenging space where you have to decide do we want to not develop this thing that could be used for evil and let China potentially just go for it ahead of us and have total reign on that space?

Nicole Williams [00:39:03] Or do we develop something that could be very detrimental but still at least have sort of like national reign on that space. What,

Vance Crowe [00:39:12] What is the race, what's the end state? What's the point that you get out, you cross the finish line and you're like, we won.

Nicole Williams [00:39:18] That's a great question. I don't think anybody knows. Yeah, that's, that's part of, that's part of the challenge is it's sort of like how much money do we need to put into this? How much talent do we put into this? Like what does winning against China like, is there, is it, is there, I know ever any point where anybody like puts up the white flag and is like, okay I'm done. Like working on questionable technology, you guys won the race. I don't think that's the case. And so it is sort of a false framework. Yeah I think there's, but

Vance Crowe [00:39:49] What is it that people are trying to create? What, what is it that we wanna make sure we create before another culture does?

Nicole Williams [00:39:56] I think just more intelligent machine learning. Deep learning where we can set up systems that are essentially making themself more efficient at doing a number of things. Whether that's like playing chess against humans, like we've seen how humans have beaten, beat the greatest chess players in the world. That's like slowly expanding to more and more areas. Whether that's like facial recognition, which is obviously probably the most questionable at the, at the center of this where right there's like the Uyghur camps in China and their technology has been so strong they probably have the strongest facial recognition technology in the world where they can sort of identify people that they're looking to track down, which is scary but also if we understand how that works, the security research can often also we can better understand how to both infiltrate these systems work around these systems. You can better understand how to tell people to work around facial facial recognition systems. Whether that's wearing something on your face, painting something on your face. Like that's, that's a very prominent area of research at the moment.

Vance Crowe [00:41:04] Well that's interesting because that's a little bit like hey we have to study viruses which is dangerous in order that we can know what they can do like we, that we can find things to prevent. That's fascinating. I had never thought about AI research being, I mean you could, you could frame up an entire program just on defense, not even to go on the offense.

Nicole Williams [00:41:26] Yeah like so open AI, you know, funded by Elon Musk to sort of like democratize and democratize and open up AI to more people and make sure it's like a ethically developed space. Earlier this year or earlier last year came out with GPT two, which is basically like a natural language processing like generator. So basically somebody, to give you an example, somebody trained, trained, trained this algorithm and had this essay generated that they submitted to a context a contest, which is all other humans and the conte and the essay one like in the top 10 places, nobody knew that this essay was generated by AI and before releasing GPT two because now accessible by the public, you can sort of play around with it and do whatever you want. OpenAI actually paused for a little while and said, we've come across some research, we think that it is so transformational, we're not sure about the implications, we're gonna hold off a few months, think about this and then then decide what to do. And they ended up releasing it. But I, I do think it's gonna be transformational whether it's like they can almost replicate a scientific study or like a news article with the accuracy and sort of like order of the way this produces text

Vance Crowe [00:42:41] That would be knocking out human potential on a scale that people had not anticipated. And and I remember for a long time my, my brother who runs a, a geothermal well drilling company, he's a very, very smart guy, lives in central Illinois and he took his accounting background and decided to do really difficult manual labor and he talks all the time about people think that the manual labor jobs are gonna be the ones that go away but he is like, it's gonna be a long time before you can turn a robot into doing plumbing underneath your sink. It's gonna be a long time before you can have guys out there doing the work that we do. Not saying it can't be done but that it won't be. And I think a lot of scientists have been sitting around being like, well it's not gonna get us like we look at our intellect that's what makes us valuable. But you're saying something that is not what people were anticipating, they were anticipating the working class man would be knocked out, not the scientist.

Nicole Williams [00:43:35] Yeah, I mean I think GPT two is definitely not like largely representative natural language processing has still has a very long way to go before I think it's replacing any writing. But again it it sort of, it, this is an idea honestly that got me into AI in the first place, which is this guy Douglas Eck who's this Google researcher was doing this research about music and music that's algorithmically generated and was asking a lot of questions of will creativity ever be something that is like algorithmically replaced? And he would say no. He would say no throughout all the time. Algorithms are often like a lot of tools that we've started out using and people were like oh are the, are the pen and paper gonna reduce or replace our brains? You know, are we gonna forget everything we've ever learned 'cause we're using pen and paper, like is this gonna dictate how the rest of our world develops? And maybe it was true but we still sort of retained our human nature and managing all these technologies and I think think for a lot of cases that people imagine like immediate like plumbing or creating art like it's just gonna totally be replaced and that's not the case with a lot of things. There's plenty of areas to worry about I will say that. But I think it's people often like don't have the correct framework around that I think.

Vance Crowe [00:44:49] Do you have like a dystopian future state in mind that you're concerned about where people don't have as much use because of the ai?

Nicole Williams [00:45:00] I would say the thing I'm most concerned about is the areas of that algorithms are applied where something people really commonly misunderstand is that a like for a long time, you know AI has been around for longer than many people realize but didn't jump forward because of the amount of data and processing power we had. And so when Google sort of threw its processing power and its data into these things, we really started seeing stuff take off. But I would say the more concerning part is when people think that if they have put historically correct and robust data into a system that will just sort of predict things into the future that are therefore like ethical and good and everything is fine and often we are predicting we're taking bias from the past that may have been true but not good and sort of pushing people into that same pathway in the future. So one is like legal systems or insurance systems where somebody is taking like a, a smaller people group might have had like higher insurance rates from the past for some data backed reasons. Whether or not their valid reasons is questionable but those are then projected into the future where they continue to have higher insurance rates and it creates this like rolling system that people can't get out of and people also don't often question because they're like it's data backed, we don't need to think about that and that's not the case.

Vance Crowe [00:46:23] Yeah, I think there's an interesting thing that goes on with science and I see it right now going on because of coronavirus, which is the is ought dilemma. And I think a lot of people, once you hear this framework you're like man, I guess I'd never really thought about that. But it is for people that don't know the you science discovers what is true, but what is true does not say then what we ought to do is, and there are a lot of people in the scientific community that they grab an IS that says, hey the data shows us within this error measure, we can do these things so therefore we ought to do this. And that is a science backed reason. And what they've forgotten is somewhere between when they had the is and the ought is a value that they imputed into that. And algorithms like when we trust them to tell us what we should do, they are putting an ought from that. They've derived from their is into it.

Nicole Williams [00:47:19] Yeah, and I think something really interesting there is a lot of people think that if, again if it's data backed, you're, you're avoiding making that on entirely like you're taking the past and things that occurred naturally and we're just projecting that into the future because to project our own sort of like ethical concerns or just like ethics broadly onto an empirical system would be bad, right? Like we can't force our own views on other people. But often what ends up happening is that because nobody asks a question about what is being promoted in the future here, it's often something even worse than I think we would come up on our own and that's just projected into the future. And so yeah, and and also even with the is often we're sure what the is thing was because of, and that's not the case. So it's like again, you saw that you've like this people group with super high insurance rates and you're like, these people were more likely to have like car accidents or you know, their car was more likely to get stolen or something like that. And maybe that's because of the system that was around them rather than those people and any core trait about like them as a people group, which is almost always the case.

Vance Crowe [00:48:30] Yeah, and I can imagine that things like actuarial sciences being almost intoxicating to believe, like look at all this data we have and sure there may be a little bit of bias in there, but if we just keep dumping the data in there eventually will come out with a, with a great answer because we have so much more information.

Nicole Williams [00:48:49] Yeah, it's a, I mean it's a very powerful feeling, right? Like that's the other thing. I think algorithms and AI are sort of concentrating this inequality because all of a sudden it's like the people who write these systems, your bias is then almost executed on such a extraordinarily large amount of people. Yeah, it's, it's a very powerful position to be in and it's almost more dangerous because it doesn't seem like power is there, you know, it's like it's not the future where robots are clearly taking over humanity. It's the future where using this app that makes your life a little bit more easy is like putting power into the hands of everybody who's dictating their future in a way you don't even realize.

Vance Crowe [00:49:32] So you seem very bold and confident and optimistic and some somebody that you're, that is like easy to cheer for you to like, hey, I wanna know what Nicole thinks about the future. What about the future? Are you excited about that you think people are missing right now? They don't, they don't see that like we have these great things coming. Maybe you don't have 'em. I, you just seem so optimistic.

Nicole Williams [00:49:54] No, I definitely have them. I think medical technology is something specifically I've been pretty excited about for a while and my excitement is only climbing, I think. Yeah, I went through that medical accelerator with the Nova Hospitals sort of researching how we can get better at diagnosing different types of cancer with data science, machine learning and obviously HIPAA regulations and all sorts of data privacy regulations have been sort of a unique challenge, you know, some of the highest data regulations in place in any industry. And so I, I think there's a lot of things like federated learning that represent a big shift coming soon. We've seen a lot of industries transformed by AI and sort of

Vance Crowe [00:50:35] What is federated learning.

Nicole Williams [00:50:37] Federated learning is something that your, if you have Google keyboard on your phone, for example, utilizes this technology where basically you are taking personal and often sensitive data. Like you probably don't wanna Google people to be reading every single text you're sending and they sort of basically come up with a local takeaway or abstraction or algorithmic change that they are going to send to the cloud to add to their Google keyboard like broader algorithmic systems. But they're not sending every single text that you send every piece of personal data to the cloud and to Google broadly. So it represents a lot less of a security risk. It is still, there's a lot of questions about, you know, can you reverse engineer from that abstraction, any of these's personal data or like if you have a large amount of data, could you work backwards to the data that might be tied to you? People are still researching that, but I think we're seeing more and more applications that are a good indicator that soon we'll see that, that sort of industry transformation in medicine I'm really excited about.

Vance Crowe [00:51:47] So this would include like if I have my Apple watch and I'm going running and Apple then says, we wanna take some of your fitness data and we don't wanna know anything about you in particular, but we wanna know about people that are your age that are exercising in this way. What is their resting heart rate? Because that can help us understand some other thing about medicine in some way.

Nicole Williams [00:52:06] Right? Yeah, that's actually a great example because Apple, apple watches the industry is very segmented again by the people who have large amounts of data. And so people for a long time have been trying to say, okay, if we just get a bunch of people to wear our heart tracker, whatever, we can study heart disease or whatever it might be. But because Apple already has such a large portion of users, they've made an agreement with Stanford I think in 19, or sorry, 2017 or 2016, to do a bunch of heart disease research again because it's so easy to get people to say, oh yeah, like I already trust Apple, they've been fairly good about my privacy. I will give them, you know, the ability to look at high level takeaways about my health and heart health and exercise. So yeah, that's a great example.

Vance Crowe [00:52:48] Yeah, I feel like I'm probably cavalier about how much I'm, I'm like, Hey, you want that data? Okay. Like only just recently I've started seeing Spencer Wells who's a guy I interviewed on the podcast. He's a population geneticist, have like some problems with 23 in me. And for me I was like, Hey, if they, I'm gonna give you my DNA 'cause it's lying around everywhere and I wanna know what you can tell me about my, my, you know, congenital conditions or, or whatever those are. I've been, I would say Cavaliers. Would you warn people against that or do you, do you think Nah, it's for the most part the federated learning is good.

Nicole Williams [00:53:25] This is a super, I was discussing this with a friend yesterday actually. I, in my early teens actually quite rebelled against my parents who are both technology people and were both warning me about data privacy from very early on they were like, if you have a Twitter and you're doing this, your data's going to these people, yada yada. And I was like, oh this is so ridiculous. I found this startup where I could sign up and attach all my social media and I would get paid for my data. And so I was making like $5 a month or something in eighth grade off my own data because I felt very rebelliously I needed to, you know, sort of push back.

Vance Crowe [00:54:00] It's like a kid going and smashing mirrors and walking underneath the ladder,

Nicole Williams [00:54:05] The technologist child rebellion. But I would say for me personally, honestly, I don't live by my own advice. Like I'm very aware and I'm interested in how people are data collecting. I wouldn't say I'm just like, yes, take my data. Yes, take my data. I wouldn't do 23 and me or anything either. Because I think the interesting thing, most companies at this point are in data play, right? So like ride sharing. If you are taking, doing those like car rental, like Zipcar 23 and me, all of those are often like their real business is eventually going to be like we have the largest collection of where people are driving, why they need to rent cars, people's genetics, genetic data that eventually will probably be used for other things. Those are the cases where it's most concerning to me where, I mean, Google and Facebook is arguably the case too. It's hard. I personally say at this point it's, you can't often those like last steps of saying no, don't share my data are not gonna do a whole lot unless you're totally off the grid. There's a good chance you're already giving that data to some people. So like, yes, I'm an advocate for making conscious decisions, but I think you have to be aware of the large data collecting ecosystem you're living in to begin with.

Vance Crowe [00:55:15] In the ag world, this data collection is off the charts because the, the farmers have the ability to track basically every square foot of their farm if they have the right equipment on their tractor, the way that they plant, what they spray, how they harvest. And you could potentially make a case that if you are the company that is puts a little USB puck into a tractor, there is the potential that as that tra as that farmer is harvesting their crops, the, the whoever is collecting that data can say, Hey, we know that the bushels per acre in this area is going to be about this much so we can start trading futures. And so whoever grabs that data and has it first, there's potential for it to be misused. And I think one of the biggest challenges is you have these farmers that they need that data in order to make smart decisions for the next year of planting, but they don't know, can I trust the people I'm giving this data to to not use it against me? And then they have their kids going away to college and coming back and trying to explain like, we could use all this technology but they don't know is the cost of using that DA giving up my data worth that? And maybe it's worth it over one year or two years, but what happens over five years or 10 years?

Nicole Williams [00:56:32] Right? That's that's a so interesting, I'm gonna go Google more about that after done. But b that's a perfect example of I think sort of what I'm thinking about when people are like, should I just be super security focused? The trade off is often that if all your competitors are using these data predictive services and data collection services, it's not just a choice of like, am I okay with these people having my data? It's a choice that of am I suddenly like, okay with making, making this business decisions a lot harder because I don't have the leg up that everybody around me has decided they're okay with. And so I don't know, I, there's a lot of small steps you can take, but again, it's like another burden on your back, which is like if a company is not clear about what they're using that data for or data, like talk to your friends about that. If you have, again, if you're like an ag person, you probably have a lot of friends who are thinking about the same thing, get them together, write letters, call the people who are working as data officers at these companies and sort of like push for more transparency. So you can tell whether that's the case or you can begin to work on like that being more transparent. But

Vance Crowe [00:57:39] 1%, somebody that can explain what is going on to the farmers would have value right now in the market because the, the farmers are highly intelligent. They're running multimillion dollar businesses. There's, they have data, they have more reams of data than than most people and they, like they are the companies that are selling them. These technologies are trusted seed companies, right? But now they're coming back and saying, well we also have this other digital technology. So they look there and say, well who can we trust? And I feel like a lot of the east coast and west coast venture capital that's flooding in to try and do ag tech, the big bridge that's missing right now is people living in the cities being connected with farmers and saying like, what is your actual problem? So you could develop the greatest AI technology in the world, but if you don't have the farmers' trust on what you're gonna do with that data, they're never gonna buy it.

Nicole Williams [00:58:35] Yeah, yeah. That's totally fair. I feel like yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff. Like I was listening to this trucking podcast, which is super interesting. And there was a guy, this guy who has been a trucker, like a long haul trucker for years, has the podcast and he's going to their yearly convention. He sees one of his old friends that Uber Freight has hired to work for Uber. And it was interesting sort of the language he talked about, this guy made a very compelling case as a worker because he knew so intimately this industry that like nobody else in Uber really had taken the time to understand. He like got the day to day of like, okay, these new long, long haul freight regulations are really shutting us down. How do we deal with this in the future of technology and use ai, you know, in an actually effective but also trustworthy way for people in our industry.

Vance Crowe [00:59:25] Yeah. Trucking has been, I had a guy on twice in during coronavirus about trucking that we had all these regulations in and they, they had like, how many hours can you drive and the, and the computer will just shut your truck off. Like you don't, you don't, it's not like you can be like, oh I can just go another couple miles. It, it just shuts you off. And, but now with Coronavirus, because the supply chains were so in danger and there weren't very many people on the interstates, they took the regulations off and the truckers for the first time in five or 10 years have gotten to put the hammer down. So talking with truckers right now, at least for the last couple of months, it's been like they got to return to the wild west of, of hauling as fast and as much as they can. It's a wild world.

Nicole Williams [01:00:09] That's so cool. I I've, yeah, I've been following that regulation and it's super interesting because it seems like so many more unsafe situations have often come out of this regulation where somebody is pulling their truck into the thing and like they can't back all the way up to the delivery station 'cause it cuts off a few seconds before they get there. Like a lot of that is super interesting. That's, that's really interesting to hear.

Vance Crowe [01:00:31] So what do you think the world will look like in two weeks? I think today is what May 15th.

Nicole Williams [01:00:37] Ooh yeah, May 15th. I think, I mean a more and more it's huge tech companies are announcing that people, you know, it's okay for people to work from home until like 2021 or

Vance Crowe [01:00:49] Forever in Twitter case super wild,

Nicole Williams [01:00:50] Right? Or forever in Twitter's case, I think slowly the realization is sort of settling in that this is not a, okay, once things are opening open, like the world goes back to normal. Which is, it's understandable that people want it to be that way and I think it's hard to process that that's not gonna be the case. But I think it will have set in a little bit more that the way to get back to even close to normal is start researching and thinking about like what the new normal is and how we can like quickly work towards that. Which isn't just like, it's not just a vaccine. It's like how we interact in places of business where a large people amount of people have to go in and now like all that type of thing. I think people start thinking about very seriously.

Vance Crowe [01:01:33] I think one of the interesting factors that comes from people being able to work from home is now you don't have to live in the east coast or west coast corridor right along and, and now you could start living in Provo, Utah or Boise, Idaho or St. Louis, Missouri. And you could choose like, I'm gonna try and make the same salary I was making before in Silicon Valley. Only now I can buy a way bigger house because I can, I can live in a city that's less expensive.

Nicole Williams [01:02:01] Yeah, I am excited about that. I mean it's hard 'cause I think some of the value will always come from like your network. Like can you walk out the door to dinner and have this many other people who are in your industry come and sort of share their thoughts in person, which obviously is hard to replicate. But I'm excited 'cause I think there's been a generation of, you know, sort of between millennial and Gen Z people who are, have just been coastal hopping almost with every new job possibility that comes up and the, the importance of sort of like a community and long-term roots and investing in people around you that will be there no matter what has been sort of like schlock to the side in the face of career stuff. I mean that's also just how people in the US think. But I hope that this will sort of enable people to be around community that they really value for longer periods of time. But

Vance Crowe [01:02:52] To me that being in Coronavirus in St. Louis just down the street from my wife's parents, I mean it was like a miracle, right? Like it was, it was something that when it first happened, when my family members, my wife's parents are, you know, gonna move close to me. Like, ah, I was not super excited about that. But then you get into a situation like this and you're like, thank God because now we can be in a little whale pod, we can self quarantine together. And it was something that in earlier in my career would just never have been something that would be valuable to me.

Nicole Williams [01:03:21] Yeah, yeah. Really like in quarantine is also just really making clear to everybody, like the long-term stuff that is important to them, which is, which is cool too, you know, it's a underappreciated side effect for sure.

Vance Crowe [01:03:34] So I'm gonna let you go, but I wanted to ask you one more question. What is it that you think people should be paying attention to that they might not even be aware of?

Nicole Williams [01:03:44] Oh, in life

Vance Crowe [01:03:46] Or just right now? I mean you could take that as an immediate moment.

Nicole Williams [01:03:50] It's a good question. This isn't gonna make me just think for the rest of the day about this. I dunno. I think, I don't know. I would say I'm gonna give the same answer that I would give even if coronavirus weren't happening, which is just like things that you find interesting that nobody else thinks is interesting. Whether it's about the way the world is operating in the phase of quarantine, like new behavior that is emerging, new patterns that you're seeing. Like don't just think about that thing mentally and throw it away. Like talk about those things with other people. I think that's been the most rewarding for me on Twitter is everybody else has seen those little things that you ignore often. And so much of the most interesting insight comes from paying attention to those things.

Vance Crowe [01:04:35] Amen. Amen. And when you find somebody that said something you don't understand, like just be curious about it instead of saying, you know, I either need to kill this idea or I need to see it succeed. Just be curious. I'm totally down with that. So if people wanted to find you on, on Twitter to follow the craziness that you put out there, how would they do that?

Nicole Williams [01:04:53] My handle is at n and then Williams is my last name and then 0 3 0. So you know, if you hear my handle and you follow me, send me a tweet.

Vance Crowe [01:05:04] All right. I will put that in the show notes and right now, although it changes all the time, you have a little bunny in your, in your profile photo, don't you?

Nicole Williams [01:05:11] Yes, yes. It's a San Rio character. So the world of Hello Kitty, the bunny is one of Hello Kitty

Vance Crowe [01:05:18] Nicole. I, this has been a a to, I've been a total pain in the ass to schedule with. I'm so grateful you did this. This is a wonderful way to start the day. So thank you so much.

Nicole Williams [01:05:26] Great. Thank you.